BE Unit VIII Assessment 1 of 2 (2_2)

Wal-Mart
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Business organizations have an obligation to identify and engage in practices that ensure compliance with the established laws on environment. Failure to do so may lead to violation of environmental regulations resulting in subsequent prosecution of the involved organization and undeserved repercussions on the neighboring communities CITATION Har082 \l 1033 (Hartman, 2008). This paper discusses violation of environmental laws by Wal-Mart and its impacts on the community.
Recently, Wal-Mart was found guilty for having contravened the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA) and Clean Water Act in the period leading up to January 2006. Through its numerous retail stores located throughout the country, the firm was directly involved in illegal handling and indiscriminate disposal of hazardous substances. Its staff had improperly handled pesticides and fungicides that had been returned to the stores by customers besides dumping other hazardous wastes into public trash bins as well as draining perilous liquid wastes into the sewer system; practices that exposed the local population to serious health risks CITATION Dal13 \l 1033 (Kemery, 2013).
To ensure compliance, Wal-Mart ought to have put in place elaborate programs for hazardous garbage management besides training its staff on how to properly handle and manage hazardous materials. This could have ensured proper disposal and handling of all hazardous wastes, thereby ensuring observance of the environmental law besides protecting the firm from unnecessary prosecution and lawsuits. Nonetheless, the violation had significant effects on the local population. For instance, unregistered regulated pesticides were interspersed during recycling and resold to customers, thereby exposing the public to serious health risks. Similarly, disposal of hazardous substances into the sewer system also contributed to environmental degradation and further exposed...